She floated aimlessly in a deep, dark void. She didn't have a shape anymore, or if she did, she couldn't feel it.
She had hoped that there would be more to the afterlife than this, but it was better than Hell, she supposed. If it existed, she'd almost certainly be sent there. Sure, she was only a child, and she'd been all but forced to turn to violence, but she'd known what might happen when She decided to take that plushie home. So in a way, it had been all her fault.
Her negative thought patterns were put on pause when she saw something take shape in the distance. No way…
She would've laughed if she had the parts to do so; it was none other than the 'light at the end of the tunnel' everyone talked about. It was bright like the sun, but didn't hurt her eyes when she stared into it, even after being smothered in darkness for who knows how long.
Well, it's better late than never, I guess.
Somehow, she managed to propel herself towards and into it. When the warm brightness fully engulfed her "body," she suddenly realized that she could feel her form again. Looking down, she could see that she was wearing the same dress she had been when she died. Her skin had lost its blue coloration from her ghost hood, and now looked the same as it had when she was alive. Speaking of feeling alive, her stomach began to protest her current position and lurched nauseatingly. She tilted her head back up, which resulted in a wave of dizziness. She groaned. Now, this is a part of being alive that I didn't miss.
"Ah, so you have finally arrived."
She jumped at the powerful sounding voice booming in the now white void, not helping with the constant sensation of being about to go splat on a hard surface at any moment. "It's mostly my fault you are so late."The voice continued. "I didn't have the portal open for you until about a minute ago, or what passes for it around here. I didn't think you would give up the ghost—haha—for another few centuries yet. Nevertheless, it is good to finally meet you, Cailey."
"Uh…" Her voice also echoes, but not the same way it did as a ghost, and not quite the same as the other voice either. "Are you… God? A-and also… I uh, I go by Spooky now."
Spooky found herself stuttering more than usual. She'd never thought this moment would come, and dreaded the possibility of it. When Ron had banished Bessie from their dimension with very dubious methods, and Zoe and Specimen 9 "visited" her afterwords, she'd felt that the best option would be to cross over, away from their ire. They thought they had forced her to leave, but nope; that was just Spooky's one last screw you to them. But now, floating in the presence of this incredibly powerful entity which was almost certainly God, well…
Rather than answering her question, the voice just laughed. "You're in my domain now. In my domain, there are no secrets, no masks."
Spooky huffs. The novelty of being able to do so again takes the edge off her frustration.
"As for who I am, well, that's tricky. Sometimes I'm God, sometimes I'm The Devil. Sometimes I'm nice, sometimes not so much. I have more names than there are grains of sand. I can't even think of them all off the top of my head."
"Well uh, is there something I can call you?" Spooky asks, starting to feel a bit impatient. Getting impatient with God (if that's even who this is) was not how she expected this to play out, but she'd never expected this to play out at all in the first place, so…
"Hmm. Well, I can't tell you my personal name for personal reasons, but I guess you can call me B.O.B. It stands for Big, Omnipotent Being. That's what I am if you haven't picked that up yet."
Spooky doesn't even try holding back her laugh. "You want me to call you Bob?"
B.O.B. also laughs. "You want me to call you Spooky?" They quip.
"Touché, I guess," Spooky says through a sigh.
"Right, then. Now that that's out of the way, time to get on with business. As you've probably guessed by now, this is the part where I judge you and decide where you'll spend eternity. But to be completely honest with you, I have no idea what I should do with you."
Spooky suddenly finds herself watching flashbacks of her life. Weird, I thought this kinda thing usually happens before someone dies.
"At first, you seemed like an okay kid, all things considered. But then that cow came along. She watches as Bessie convinces her to try to scare Mr. Peterson, followed by her untimely death via shotgun to the face. Even now, it's one of the things that still makes her cringe.
"You became violent," A random person in the Mansion plays Mrs. Spook, the first game she had created for the Mansion. "Egotistical,"Paintings upon paintings of herself hanging on the walls. "And cruel." Of course B.O.B had to pick the time, she watched on, laughing as GL Labs workers swarmed Specimen 9, beating him mercilessly with sledgehammers even as he pulled desperately at their souls.
"But the Mad Cow, that's what the thing that lead you down this path is called, horrible bugger, is very persuasive. It can play with your body and manipulate your thoughts." B.O.B. Chuckles ruefully. "Hell, I never thought I'd see the day it'd be taken down a peg or two, in this timeline, at least. My perception of time, space, and all things worldly is a little kooky if you know what I'm saying."
Spooky giggles too, but it's more uncomfortable than anything else. "Heh, yeah, I get that."
"Anywho, I should probably just toss you in Heaven and be done with it, but do you really deserve that? I mean, you didn't do anything too terrible of your own volition in life, but your ghost hood? We just went over that, and it's not pretty, not at all. And we don't usually count things during ghosthood, cause what's a little haunting between buds, am I right? But this was much more than that."
Spooky's mouth goes dry. She was afraid this was where this would lead.
B.O.B. Either doesn't notice her fear, or chooses not to acknowledge it, for they continue on in an unnervingly casual manner. "Course, you don't really deserve Hell either, though you'll probably be happy to know it's not nearly as fire and brimstone as cough cough, some people cough"
"D-Did you just say 'cough?' Like, out loud?"
"—would have you believe. It's the homeland of most demons, yes, but burning forever is a waste of perfectly good souls if you ask me. It's more like a correctional boot camp. You pay for your sins in life, and then if you've improved, you can try for Heaven or reincarnation. And before you ask, no. Being part of the LGBTQIA+ umbrella IS NOT a qualifying factor for Hell."
"Uh, I didn't ask? But good to know, I guess? So, about my afterlife…"
"I mean, come on! We have murderers, rapists, kidnappers, and well, I'm not going to list every awful thing people do to get sent to Hell, but the point is Karen, we don't have time or space to fit all the 'gays' as you so ignorantly call every slightly not cishet person in hell even if we wanted to!"
"Um… bob?"
"Seriously! If there's one thing that gets on my nerves, it's people who hate something they don't even really know about. It is by far the most irritating thing to deal with!"
"Bob?"
"I mean, come on! If you're going to insult something or someone, put in the effort to actually know what you're insulting! It all just falls flat otherwise! Not that I'm condoning insulting people, but—"
"Bob!" Spooky finally shouts, having become fed up with the deity, if that's even what this was, and their ramblings. It was the loudest she'd ever shouted in years.
"Wh—oh! Right, sorry about that, Cailey; back to the subject at hand."
Spooky couldn't help but let out a massive sigh of relief at this; this being was really starting to weird her out. A voice in the back of her mind told her that this was probably because they reminded her of a certain someone, which she promptly forced away. No need to reopen that can of worms so soon.
"Now, I've thought about this for a while, which is why you were left in the Void for so long, sorry about that. And I've finally come to a decision." They pause for dramatic effect, and the light surrounding Spooky seems to grow slightly dimmer. B.O.B. continues with a lowered, solemn tone. "This thing you created alongside the Mad Cow, that Eldritch abomination of death and chaos, what's it called? Oh yes, the Jump Scare Mansion. Even though it's softened up a great deal, it is still alive and thriving. And this might not seem like a big deal, given that it's not really dangerous to anyone anymore, well, there's a certain way the universe runs, Cailey. Sort of similar to how everything and everyone in your mansion had a certain thing they needed to be doing in order for things to go smoothly. And when that's disrupted…" They trail off, allowing Spooky's mind to wander back to her humiliating defeat at the hands of Zoe and Specimen 9. She really wishes they'd stop making her think about it. Is this my punishment? She can't help but wonder.
"Basically, the Mansion has disrupted the natural state of the universe and everything's going to go sideways if nobody pulls the plug to stop it."
"Uh, okay?" Spooky utters. She realizes too late that this might not have been the best thing to say, but it'd already been done. "So, why not send Zoe to help with that? She's really good at, uh, messing up my—the Mansion."
"Oh, I'm sending her." B.O.B. clarifies. "But as you should know by now, Zoe's never alone on her adventures. They always have a companion. And what better person to fill that role? What could possibly be more poetic, and hilarious, than the one who helped start it all being the one to help end it?"
Shocked at what exactly the entity was getting at, Spooky tried to ask them what exactly they meant. But to her growing dread, she found herself losing her form again and was unable to speak.
"Get ready, Cailey O'Connor!" B.O.B.'s voice echoed dramatically as everything began to fade out. "Get ready for round two! Well, technically it's round three, but round two sounds much more dramatic, wouldn't you agree?"
Spooky's mind was an erratic jumble of thoughts, bouncing frantically from one notion to another as black began to fill her vision once more. The final coherent thought she managed before she lost consciousness completely was …They?
A/N: Alright everyone, welcome to the final planned longfic in this series. If you couldn't tell already, this is going to go even more off the rails than the other two stories, but I hope you'll still enjoy it.
Another few things to note is that even though this is a self-insert, some things are changed for this fic. For example, I didn't discover I was gender non-conforming and liked she/they pronouns until last October when I was 18, and not 17 like in this story. Another thing of note is that more of my family members and friends might be making appearances, but to protect them from this chaos, every name except my own (my name really is Zoe if you didn't know that) will be changed. Thanks for reading.